Poisonous Gurnard?

[George]

Are The spines on gurnard's dorsal fins poisonous?

[JimC]

Not known to be. If you got a good spiking theres a chance the cut could get infected and be quite painful.

[x]

As far as I know there are only about two or three fish with venomous spines in Irish waters. However, anything that cuts, bites or stabs can cause some nasty bacterial infections, oddly enough most commonly with wounds which bleed very little - apparently a good gouging bleeds enough to flush most of the opportunistic bacteria found on the skin of fish (some. like those common to spurdog and wrasse seem to love a holiday in a warm-blooded host and positively thrive....) out of the wound before they take hold. I've seen some horriffic infections from spurdog and wrasse spines - if you hear of a fisherman talking about a 'fat finger' - they're talking about an infection so bad that their finger swole up to about double its normal diameter, probably had to be lanced to drain the infection and required intravenous antibiotics to clear up. Ouch.

Guys gillnetting for spurdog used to keep a jamjar of Jeyes Fluid, (somewhat diluted but still in concentrations that would have bleached a concrete pathway) on the boat an dip the spiked digit in for a couple of seconds before going back to devastating the doggie population. Seemed to work most of the time. Makes the wire brush and Dettol treatment sound almost humane though......

So don't worry too much about venomous fish. Theres an awful lot more non-venomous ones about that are way more likely to do harm if not handled with care.

[Drew]

We started picking up Weevers yesterday, scared shat out of me. :shock: